Course Title: Gender & Society

No. of Units: 3
Prerequisite: None
No. of Hours: 54 hrs.
Gender and Society is a three-unit course that
ignites awareness to the students’ understanding of
Course description: our country’s current problems in Gender
inequality, Gender mainstreaming, Gender
preferences, and the likes. It equips the students
with a broader perspective on their gender roles as
they discern stereotypes and discriminations as
dictated by the society. It prepares students to be
more gender sensitive in words and in actions as
they build a new society filled with gender
responsive individuals.
 Written exams/outputs
Course  Refection paper/Analytical essay/Analysis
requirements: paper
 Read all course readings and answer the self-
assessment activities

Course Outline and Timeframe:

Timeframe Topic
Week 1 Gender and gender concepts/terms
Week 2-3 Gender and gender differences and their implications to
societies
Week 4 National and international legal frameworks for gender
equality
Week 5 Sociology of gender, social constructionism and gender
role.
Week 6-7 The difference between masculinity and femininity.
Week 8-9 Gender categories.
Week 10 Gender and sexuality identity
Week 11-12 Intersex and Homosexuality/ Intersex and Transgender
Week 13-15 LGBT and LGBTI/ Risky Behaviors of Adolescent
Week 16-17 Anatomy and Physiology of Reproduction
Week 18 The Process of Reproduction
Week 19 Sexual Health and Hygiene

Module 1
Lesson 1: Introduction to Gender
Overview
 This lesson presents the gender research and analysis enables us to examine and
challenge social norms around what it means to be a woman or man in society, and to
pursue justice and equality for all, which should be fundamental facets of development.

Intended learning Outcomes (ILO)

At the end of this module, the students should be able to:
 Define gender and gender concepts/terms;
 Discuss critically the gender and gender differences and their implications to
societies; and
 Analyze the theories and perspectives gender identity as proposed by the
scholars/scientist.

Learning Content

The concepts of gender and sex are distinct but connected. Sex: Sex refers to
biological and physiological characteristics. In Britain, the terms „male‟ and „female‟
are used in birth certificates to denote the sex of children.
Gender: Gender refers to socially constructed roles, behaviors, activities, and
attributes. The terms „man‟, „masculine‟, „woman‟, and „feminine‟ denote gender. Sex
and gender, and the terms, 'male/female‟ and „man/woman‟ are often used and
understood interchangeably. However, in the research literature, sex and gender are
considered separately. These definitions are taken from the Equality and Human Rights
Commission's publication. Gender norms are learned and are not fixed; they evolve and
change over time.
The roles, behaviors or activities accepted as „normal‟ can differ between
societies. Societies vary in how rigidly they apply gender stereotypes, and the amount of
flexibility they allow individuals in interpreting their own gender identity. Unless
challenged, gender stereotypes can be formed and reinforced very early in a child's life.
Unquestioned social acceptance of gender stereotypes implies more limited for
individuals, and physical and mental health risks if they do not comply with those
stereotypes.
Harassment and discrimination based on sex are illegal in the Equality Act 2010.
Biological sex does not only consist of the simple binaries of male and female (Sen et al,
2007. People can choose their gender, including non-binary gender identities, while sex
can also be changed in both a physical and a legal sense. The challenge to heterosexual
norms by the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) movement goes beyond
biological sex to reflect how sexuality and gender are defined and expressed.
(Information from the Scottish Public Health Observatory, 2020)

1.1 Sex and gender

Gender is not something we are born with, and not something we have, but
something we do (West and Zimmerman 1987) – something we perform (Butler 1990).
Imagine a small boy proudly following his father. As he swaggers and sticks out his
chest, he is doing everything he can to be like his father – to be a man. Chances are his
father is not swaggering, but the boy is creating a persona that embodies what he is
admiring in his adult male role model. The same is true of a small girl as she puts on her
mother’s high-heeled shoes, smears makeup on her face and minces around the room.
Chances are that when these children are grown, they will not swagger and mince
respectively, but their childhood performances contain elements that may well surface
in their adult male and female behaviors. Chances are, also, that the girl will adopt that
swagger on occasion as well, but adults are not likely to consider it as cute as her
mincing act. And chances are that if the boy decides to try a little mincing, he won’t be
considered cute at all. In other words, gendered performances are available to everyone,
but with them come constraints on who can perform which personae with impunity.
And this is where gender and sex come together, as society tries to match up ways of
behaving with biologically based sex assignments.
Sex is a biological categorization based primarily on reproductive potential, whereas
gender is the social elaboration of biological sex. Not surprisingly, social norms for
heterosexual coupling and care of any resulting children are closely intertwined with
gender. But that is far from the full story. Gender builds on biological sex, but it
exaggerates biological difference, and it carries biological difference into domains in
which it is completely irrelevant. There is no biological reason, for example, why women
should mice and men should swagger, or why women should have red toenails and men
should not. But while we think of sex as biological and gender as social, this distinction
is not clear-cut. People tend to think of gender as the result of nurture – as social and
hence fluid – while sex is the result of nature, simply given by biology. However, nature
and nurture intertwine, and there is no obvious point at which sex leaves off and gender
begins. But the sharp demarcation fails because there is no single objective biological
criterion for male or female sex. Sex is based in a combination of anatomical, endocrinal
and chromosomal features, and the selection among these criteria for sex assignment is
based very much on cultural beliefs about what actually makes someone male or female.
Thus, the very definition of the biological categories’ male and female, and people’s
understanding of themselves and others as male or female, is ultimately social. Anne
Fausto-Sterling (2000) sums up the situation as follows:
labeling someone a man or a woman is a social decision. We may use scientific
knowledge to help us make the decision, but only our beliefs about gender – not science
– can define our sex. Furthermore, our beliefs about gender affect what kinds of
knowledge scientists produce about sex in the first place. (p. 3)
Biology offers up dichotomous male and female prototypes, but it also offers us
many individuals who do not fit those prototypes in a variety of ways. Blackless et al.
(2000) estimate that 1 in 100 babies are born with bodies that differ in some way from
standard male or female. These bodies may have such conditions as unusual
chromosomal makeup (e.g., 1 in 1,000 male babies are born with two X chromosomes as
well as a Y, hormonal differences such as insensitivity to androgens (1 in 13,000 births),
or a range of configurations and combinations of genitals and reproductive organs. The
attribution of intersex does not end at birth – for example, 1 in 66 girls experience
growth of the clitoris in childhood or adolescence (known as late onset adrenal
hyperplasia).
When “anomalous” babies are born, surgical and/or endocrinal manipulations may
be used to bring their recalcitrant bodies into closer conformity with either the male or
the female category. Common medical practice imposes stringent requirements for male
and female genitals at birth – a penis that is less than 2.5 centimeters long when
stretched, or a clitoris2 that is more than one centimeter long have commonly been
subject to surgery in which both are reduced to an “acceptable” sized clitoris (Dreger
1998). As a number of critics have observed (e.g. Dreger 1998), the standards of
acceptability are far more stringent for male genitals than female, and thus the most
common surgery transforms “unacceptable” penises into clitorises, regardless of the
child’s other sexual characteristics, and even if this requires fashioning a nonfunctional
vagina out of tissue from the colon. In recent years, the activist organization, the
Intersex Society of North America, has had considerable success as an advocacy group
for the medical rights of intersex people, and the medical profession has become more
sensitive to both physical and psychological issues associated with gender assignment
and surgery (e.g. Lee et al 2006).
 In those societies that have a greater occurrence of certain kinds of hermaphroditic
or intersexed infants than elsewhere, there sometimes are social categories beyond the
standard two into which such babies can be placed. But even in such societies, categories
that go beyond the basic two are often seen as anomalous. And even where sex
assignment seemed straightforward at birth, an individual may develop a gender
identity different from the one initially assigned on the basis of anatomical criteria.
Transgender people may embrace the other of the two options standardly on offer or
they may resist gender dichotomies altogether. Kate Bornstein, a trans woman who
finds gender deeply problematic, sums up this resistance nicely in her 1995 book title,
Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us.
It is commonly argued that biological differences between males and females
determine gender by causing enduring differences in capabilities and dispositions.
Higher levels of testosterone, for example, are said to lead men to be more aggressive
than women; and left-brain dominance is said to lead men to be more rational while
their relative lack of brain lateralization should lead women to be more emotional. But
the relation between physiology and behavior is not simple, and it is all too easy to leap
for gender dichotomies. And the physiology itself is more complex than is usually
acknowledged. It has been shown that hormonal levels, brain activity patterns, and even
brain anatomy can be a result of different activity as well as a cause. For example,
research with species ranging from rhesus monkeys (Rose et al. 1972) to fish (Fox et al.
1997) has documented changes in hormone levels as a result of changes in social
position.
Work on sex differences in the brain is very much in its early stages, and is far from
conclusive (Fausto-Sterling 2000). Men’s supposedly smaller corpus callosum, larger
amygdala, larger PR mammillary nucleus, are among the questionable structural
differences that are supposed to account for gender differences from men’s greater
visual-spatial skills to their tendency to stare at breasts. Much of the popular work on
gender differences in the brain are based on shaky evidence, and are commonly
exaggerations and even distortions of what appears in the scientific literature. And the
scientific literature itself is based on very small samples, often from sick or injured
populations. In addition, not that much is known about the connections between brain
physiology and behavior or cognition – hence about the consequences of any
physiological difference’s scientists may be seeking or finding. And above all, the brain is
very plastic, changing in response to experience. Thus, the causal relation between brain
physiology and activity is completely unclear (Eliot 2009). Nonetheless, any results that
might support physiological differences are readily snatched up and combined with any
variety of gender stereotypes in some often quite fantastic leaps of logic. And the
products of these leaps can in turn feed directly into social, and particularly into
educational, policy, with arguments that gender equity in such “left-brain areas” as
mathematics and engineering is impossible.
(For additional critiques of sex difference science, see Kaplan & Rogers 2003), Fine
2010), and Jordan-Young 2010). Deborah Cameron (2009) refers to the search for
gender differences in biology as “the new biologism”, and points out that the linguistic
traits that scientists are trying to explain biologically (such as women’s greater language
ability) are not even themselves supported by serious linguistic study. Furthermore,
those pushing for biologically based explanations of sex differences ignore the fact that
the very same linguistic differences that they see between the genders also correlate with
race and social class, and many of the sex differences they cite as biologically based
actually vary historically and cross culturally (e.g., Keenan 1974; Kulick 1993,1994).

Activity 1 (Read the learning content before answering this activity)

Directions: Read the questions or statements carefully and choose the correct
choice. Write your answer on the space provided before each item. 2 points each
___1.) The term _____ refers to biological differences between men and women, while
the term _____ refers to psychological differences, such as masculine or feminine an
individual feels.
a. Sex; gender b. Gender; sex
c. Intersexual; transgender d. Transgender; intersexual
___2.) John is born with the chromosomes XYY. Based only on this information, which
category of people does John fall into?
a. Homosexuals b. Bisexuals
c. Intersexed people d. Transsexuals
___3.) Are among the questionable structural differences that are supposed to account
for gender differences from men’s greater visual-spatial skills to their tendency to stare
at breasts.
a. premammillary nucleus b. abdomen
c. Chest d. hormones

____4.) Much of the popular work on gender differences in the brain are based
on____.
a. shaky evidence b. hormones Evidence
 c. new biologism d. testosterone
___5.) A biological categorization based primarily on reproductive potential, whereas
gender is the social elaboration of biological sex.
a. Sex b. gender
c. biologism d. hermaphroditic

Activity 2
Directions: Write S if the statement refers to Sex and G if the statement refers to
Gender. Write your answer on the space provided before each item. 2 points each
_____1. Women give birth to babies, men don't.
2. Girls are gentle, boys are rough.
3. In one case, when a child brought up as a girl learned that he was actually a
boy, his school marks improved dramatically.
4. Amongst Indian agriculture workers, women are paid 40-60 per cent of the
male wage.
5. In Europe, most long-distance truck drivers are men.
6. Women can breastfeed babies, men can bottle-feed babies.
7. Most building-site workers in Britain are men.
8. In ancient Egypt men stayed at home and did weaving. Women handled family
business. Women inherited property and men did not.
9. Men's voices break at puberty; women's do not.
10. In one study of 224 cultures, there were 5 in which men did all the cooking,
and 36 in which women did all the housebuilding.
_____11. According to UN statistics, women do 67 per cent of the world's work, yet
their earnings for it amount to only 10 per cent of the world's income.
12. There are more women than men in the caring professions such as nursing.
13. Men are susceptible to prostate cancer, women are not.
Adopted from: International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent
Societies, 2003

Gender GAP and Patterns of Gender Inequality

Gender Gap focuses on the differences between men and women at the national level,
seeing both groups as a homogenous one. However, gender differences are significantly
linked to factors such as age, race, ethnicity, etc.

The gender gap is the difference in any area between women and men in terms of their
levels of participation, access to resources, rights, power and influence, remuneration
and benefits. Of particular relevance related to women‟s work is the “gender pay gap”,
describing the difference between the average earnings of men and women (ILO, 2007).

The Global Gender Gap Report 2014 benchmarks national gender gaps of 142 countries
on economic, political, education- and health-based criteria. 2014 was a 9th edition of
the Index

Patterns of Inequality

Inequalities in political power and representation: Women are often

underrepresented in formal decision-making structures, including governments,
community councils, and policy-making institutions.

Inequalities in economic participation and opportunities: In most countries,

women and men are distributed differently across sectors. Women are receiving lower
wages for similar work, are more likely to be in low-paid jobs and unsecured work (part-
time, temporary, home-based) and are likely to have less access than men to productive
assets such as education, skills, property and credit.

Educational attainment: In most countries women have lower literacy rate, lower
level of enrolment in primary, secondary and tertiary education.
Sexual and domestic violence: Women tend to be more often victims in a form a
domestic violence by woman’s intimate partner, sexual exploitation through trafficking
and sex trade, in wars by an enemy army as a weapon of attempted „ethnic cleansing‟
etc.
Differences in legal status and entitlements: There are many instances in which
equal rights to personal status, security, land, inheritance and
employment are denied to women by law or practice.

Achieving greater equality between women and men will require changes at many levels,
including changes in attitudes and relationships, changes in institutions and legal
frameworks, changes in economic institutions, and changes in political decision-making
structures.

Other Gender Terms and Terminologies

Other Terms Definitions

Disaggregated Data Data broken down by sex, age or other variables to reflect the
different needs, priorities and interests of women and men,
and their access to and control over resources, services and
activities.
Gender Blind Ignoring or failing to address the gender dimension.
Gender Analysis The study of differences in the conditions, needs,
participation rates, access to resources and development,
control of assets, decision-making powers, etc., between
women and men in their assigned gender roles.
Gender Awareness The recognition of the fact that life experience, expectations,
and needs of women and men are different,
that they often involve inequality and are subject to change.
Gender Balance Having the same (or a sufficient) number of women and men
at all levels within the organization to ensure equal
representation and participation in all areas of activity and
interest.
Gender Focal Point A person within the organization (field or headquarters) who
is identified as being a reference point for issues concerning
gender.
Gender Roles The sets of behavior, roles and responsibilities attributed to
women and men respectively by society which are reinforced
at the various levels of the society through its political and
educational institutions and systems, employment patterns,
norms and values, and through the
family.
Gender Mainstreaming The systematic integration of the respective needs, interests
and priorities of men and women in all the organization’s
policies and activities. This rejects the idea that gender is a
separate issue and something to be tacked
on as an afterthought.
Feminism A collection of movements and ideologies that share a
common goal: to define, establish, and achieve equal political,
economic, cultural, personal, and social rights for women.
There are several outdated and false stereotypes on feminism
(e.g. feminism meant wanting women to defeat or overtake
men into submission).
Activity 3

Directions. Answer the following questions substantially. Use separate paper if

necessary. 3 points each

1. What are the differences of sex and gender?

2. What are the differences between Gender Equality and Gender Equity?

3. Why is it necessary to know the differences of Transgender to Transsexual?

4. Why is there Gender Inequality?

5. Pick 5 terms from the topic Other Gender Terms then discuss the way you
understood the term.
Activity 5

 Write a reflection paper based on the learning content.

 450 words (articles/determiners are not counted)
 Use the organized approach: Introduction, body & conclusion.
 Use separate paper.

Criteria:

Content: 15 points
Relevance: 10 points
Organization
Of ideas : 5 points
30 points (possible score)